MONTEREY, CA – U.S. broadcast station mergers and acquisitions volume reached $748.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2017 and closed the year at $8.24 billion, the highest annual deal volume since 2014 and the third-highest since the financial crisis of 2008, says new research by Kagan, a media research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence.
In the fourth quarter of 2017, one-third of U.S. broadcast station deal volume ($248.3 million) came from radio deals. TV deal volume reached $500.5 million, with 65% of that from the top deal of the quarter.
The total broadcast deal volume in 2017 amounted to $8.24 billion, with $3.21 billion in the radio and $5.03 billion in the TV sector. The biggest stories of 2017 were the mergers of Entercom and CBS Corp.'s CBS Radio announced in February and of Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. and Tribune Media Company announced in April. The deals stand for 80% ($2.56 billion) of the radio deal volume and 75% ($3.76 billion) of the TV deal volume.
But even without these deals, the radio market would have registered a 23% higher deal volume than in 2016, while the TV deal market would have grown by 79% compared to 2016, excluding Nexstar Broadcasting Group's merger with Media General Inc., continues the research.
